Gareth Jones - the Welsh journalist who changed the world

It's a singularly blurry photo - you could almost overlook the figure in the foreground at first glance - but the fuzzy image shows how close Gareth Jones once got to the twentieth century's most infamous dictator.

The year was 1933. The location, Frankfurt. Jones, by then a journalist with the Western Mail, had travelled to the city to watch the newly appointed Chancellor Adolf Hitler hold a rally.

He later recounted the journey in an article for the paper, describing the flight in the "Richthofen" plane, and the Fuhrer's "firm" handshake and "emotionless" eyes, writing: "If this aeroplane should crash, then the whole history of Europe would be changed."

It wasn’t the only time that he Welshman – described by his former boss Lloyd George as having ”an unfailing knack for getting at things that mattered” – found himself at the centre of a major story.

Born in Barry, Jones was educated at Aberystwyth University and then Cambridge, where he excelled at languages. He later served as a foreign advisor for David Lloyd George before becoming a journalist.

A month after his encounter with the Führer, Jones heard reports of a terrible famine gripping the Soviet Union, caused, it was said, by the policies of Stalin's government. The reporter travelled to Moscow and took a train to Kharkiv, then capital of Ukraine.

Jones spent three days walking through the region, sleeping at the home of the head of a collective farm and, on another night, at a peasant’s house.

A fluent Russian-speaker, he interviewed villagers everywhere he went. Some told him about how they'd been reduced to eating cattle-fodder and had only a month's supply left.

The reporter also described how - when travelling with a communist party member who denied the stories about starvation - he (Jones) threw a piece of bread into a "spittoon."

"A peasant fellow-passenger fished it out and ravenously ate it. I threw an orange peel into the spittoon and the peasant again grabbed it and devoured it. The Communist subsided."

After returning to Berlin, Jones gave a press conference where he revealed his findings. But his first-hand account was met with scepticism by the journalistic establishment.

Walter Duranty, the New York Times foreign correspondent, branded Jones' story "a big scare story", claiming that that had "been no actual deaths from starvation". Jones issued a rebuttal in the Financial Times, writing that Russian censorship had turned more seasoned foreign journalists into "masters of euphemism and understatement." Unsurprisingly, he was banned from entering the Soviet Union again.

But his determination to find out what was really going on in the world continued to burn. Ultimately, it was to cost him his life. In 1935, during a "Round-The-World Fact-Finding Tour", Jones was captured by bandits in Inner Mongolia and shot dead, He was just 29.

His achievements might have been forgotten were it not for the efforts of his niece, Dr Margaret Siriol Colley, whose book 'More than a Grain of Truth’ was first published 15 years ago.

That account also inspired the film 'Mr Jones', starring James Norton in the title role and and directed by Agnieszka Holland.

Jones' family say his approach to journalism is as relevant as ever.

Today, Jones' notebooks - including his first impressions of the Russian famine and that meeting with Hitler - are kept at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth.

On Valentine's Day, a screening of "Mr Jones" was held at the library, not far from the university where its hero studied almost a century ago.

It's a fitting tribute to a short but brilliant career. A career which - his family hope - will inspire journalists for generations to come.